Khan Younis, Gaza – The face of Samar Ahmed, 37, shows clear signs of exhaustion.
It's not just because she has five children, nor is it because they've been displaced several times since Israel's brutal war on Gaza began 14 months ago and are now living in cramped, cold conditions in a makeshift tent in the area. al-Mawasi. Khan Younis. Samar is also a victim of domestic violence and has no way to escape her abuser in the cramped conditions of this camp.
Two days ago, her husband beat her in the face, leaving her with a swollen cheek and a bloodshot eye. Her eldest daughter clung to her all night after that attack, which happened in front of the children.
Samar does not want to break up her family – they have already been forced to move from Gaza City, to the Shati camp in Rafah and now to Khan Younis – and the children are young. Her eldest, Laila, is only 15 years old. She also has 12-year-old Zain, 10-year-old Dana, seven-year-old Lana and five-year-old Adi to think about.
On the day Al Jazeera visits, she is trying to keep her two youngest daughters busy with schoolwork. Sitting together in the small tent, which is made of rags, the three have several notebooks spread around them. Baby Dana is huddled next to her mom, apparently wanting to give her support. Her younger sister is crying from hunger and Samar seems at a loss as to how to help them both.
As a displaced family, the loss of privacy has added a whole new layer of pressure.
“I have lost my privacy as a woman and a woman in this country. I don't want to say that my life was perfect before the war, but I was able to express what I have inside in conversation with my husband. I can shout without anyone hearing me,” says Samar. “I could control my children more in my house. Here, I live on the streets and the veil of concealment has been lifted from my life.”
A loud argument between a man and a woman carries on from the adjacent tent. Samar's face turns red with shame and sadness as foul language fills the air. She doesn't want her children to hear this.
Her instinct is to tell the children to go out and play, but Laila is washing dishes in a small bowl of water and the argument next door brings her problems back into focus.
“Every day I suffer from anxiety because of disagreements with my husband. Two days ago it was a big shock to me that he hit me like this in front of my children. All our neighbors heard my screams and cries and came to calm the situation between us.
“I felt broken,” says Samar, worried that the neighbors will think it's her fault—that her husband yells so much because she's a bad woman.
“Sometimes, when he shouts and swears, I stay silent so that those around us think he is shouting at someone else. I try to preserve my dignity, she says.
Samar tries to prevent her husband's anger by trying to solve the problems facing the family on her own. She visits aid workers every day to ask for food. She believes that it is the pressures of the war that made her husband this way.
Before the war, he worked in a small carpentry shop with a friend and that kept him busy. There were fewer arguments.
Now, she says: “Due to the severity of the disagreements between me and my husband, I wanted to divorce. But I hesitated for the sake of my children.”
Samar goes to psychological support sessions with other women, to try to release some of the negative energy and anxiety building up inside her. It helps him to hear that he is not alone. “I listen to a lot of women's stories and try to comfort myself with what I'm going through, through their experiences.”
As she speaks, Samar gets up to start preparing the food. She worries about when her husband will return and whether she will have enough to eat. A plate of beans with cold bread is all she can muster now. She can't start the fire because there is no gas.
Suddenly, Samar falls silent, fearing that a voice outside belongs to her husband. There isn't.
She asks her daughters to sit down and look at their math problems. She whispers: “He came out shouting at Adi. I hope he's in a good mood.”
“War did this to us”
Later, Samar's husband, Karim Badwan, 42, sits next to his daughters, stuffed inside the small tent where they live.
He is desperate. “This is not a life. I can't understand what I'm living. I'm trying to adapt to these difficult circumstances, but I can't. I've gone from being a practical, professional person to someone who gets so angry all the time.”
Karim says he is deeply ashamed of having hit his wife on several occasions since the start of the war.
“I hope the war ends before my wife runs out of energy and leaves me,” he says. “My wife is a good woman, so she tolerates what I say.”
A tear rolls down Samar's bruised face as she listens.
Karim says he knows what he is doing is wrong. Before the war, he had never dreamed that he would be able to harm her.
“I had friends who beat their wives. I was like, “How does he sleep at night?” Unfortunately, now I do.
“I did it more than once, but the hardest moment was when I left marks on her face and eye. I admit that this is a major failure in terms of self-control,” says Karim, his voice shaking.
“The pressures of war are great. I left my home, my job and my future and I'm sitting here in a tent, helpless in front of my children. I can't find work and when I leave the tent, I feel that if I talk to someone I will lose my temper”.
Karim knows that his wife and children have endured a lot. “I apologize for my behavior, but I continue to do it. Maybe I need medication, but my wife doesn't deserve all this from me. I'm trying to stop her from leaving me.”
Samar's despair is compounded by the loss of her family, which she left in the north to escape the bombing there with her husband and his family. Now, she is desperately lonely.
Her biggest fear is that she will burn out completely and become unable to take care of her family, as she already worries her husband has.
The responsibility of finding water and food, taking care of the children and thinking about their future has taken its toll and she lives in a constant state of fear.
'I try to be strong for my mother'
As the eldest child, Laila is developing great anxiety from the fights between her father and mother, and she fears for her mother.
She says: “Father and mother fight every day. My mother suffers from a strange nervous condition. Sometimes she yells at me for no reason. I try to bear her and understand her condition so that I don't lose her. I don't like to see him in this state, but the war did all this to us.”
Laila still sees Karim as a good father and blames the world for allowing this brutal war to go on for so long. “My father yells at me a lot. Sometimes he hits my sisters. My mother cries all night and wakes up with puffy eyes from the sadness of what we are going through.”
She sits on her bed for long hours thinking about their life before the war and her plans to study English.
“I try to be strong for my mother.”
'Unimaginable conditions'
The family is not alone. In Gaza, there has been a marked increase in domestic violence with many women attending psychological support sessions provided by aid workers in clinics.
Kholoud Abu Hajir, a psychologist, has met many victims since the start of the war in clinics in displacement camps. However, she fears there are many more who are too ashamed to talk about it.
“There's a lot of secrecy and fear among women about talking about it,” she says. “I've taken a lot of abuse cases away from group sessions – women who want to talk about what they're going through and get help.”
Living in a constant state of instability and insecurity, enduring repeated relocations and having to live in crowded tents very close together have deprived women of privacy, leaving them with nowhere to return.
“There is no complete system of psychological treatment,” Abu Hajir tells Al Jazeera. “We only work in emergency situations. The cases we deal with really require multiple sessions, and some of them are difficult cases where women need protection.
“There are very serious cases of violence that have reached the level of sexual assault and that is a dangerous thing.”
The number of divorces has increased – many between spouses who have been separated by Israel's armed corridor between north and south.
The war has taken a terrible toll on women and children, especially, says Abu Hajir.
Nevin al-Barbari, 35, a psychologist, says it is impossible to give children in Gaza the support they need under these conditions.
“Unfortunately, what children are experiencing during the war cannot be described. They need very long sessions of psychological support. Hundreds of thousands of children have lost their homes, lost a family member, and many have lost their entire family.”
Being forced to live in difficult – and sometimes violent – family circumstances has made life overwhelming for many.
“There is very clear and widespread family violence, especially among the displaced… The psychological and behavioral state of the children has been very negatively affected. Some children have become very violent and hit other children violently.”
Recently, al-Barbari came across the case of a 10-year-old child, who had hit another with a stick, causing serious injuries and bleeding.
“When I met this child, he kept crying,” she says. “He thought I was going to punish him. When I asked him about his family, he told me that his mother and father have a big fight every day and his mother goes to her family's tent for days.
“He said he missed his house, his room and the way his family used to be. This child is a very common example of thousands of children.”
It will be a long road to recovery for these children, al-Barbari says. “There are no schools to occupy them. Children are forced to bear great responsibilities, filling water and waiting in long lines for food aid. There are no recreation areas for them.
“There are so many stories that we don't know that these kids are living every day.”
